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A YOUNG WOMAN in trendy clothes and flashy jewellery (northern England)
Kappa slapper is the only one of the synonyms and near-synonyms of chav (with the exception of charva) which specifically denotes a female. It is, however, not so much a regional word as a regional marker. It isn’t distinctively used in one region or another, but it is used fairly widely. It is often used to designate northerners. All of these features stem from its unusual origin. Kappa Slappa was a short-lived character in the magazine Viz (which is produced in Newcastle); she was a young Newcastle woman who lived the life and wore the clothes associated with the urban youth subculture. Her name was based on that of the well-known Italian sportswear company Kappa, plus slapper, slang for ‘a promiscuous woman’. She was, in effect, a satirical caricature of a female charver and first appeared in the magazine at the end of 1997 (the year that charver is first recorded). The name was changed to Tasha Slappa, apparently after a complaint from Kappa, but by then the genie was out of the bottle. By 1999 the term had been picked up from London to Edinburgh, partly to describe local Kappas, and partly to describe the subculture as a characteristic phenomenon of northern cities.
See THE CHAVS AND THE CHAV-NOTS, and also CHARVER, CHAV, JANNER, NED, PIKEY, SCALLY, TROBO
knock-kneed (Yorkshire and Hampshire)
Kay is an old northern word of Scandinavian origin meaning ‘left’ when used of the left hand or (less commonly) the left foot. It is recorded in the medieval poem Gawain and the Green Knight. Kay-pawed and kay-fisted are common northern dialect words for left-handed, both of which can be used to express clumsiness (as in the more standard cack-handed), and kay-legged seems, therefore, to mean ‘having left-handed legs’ with an implicit sense of clumsiness or ungainliness. This transfer of the senses associated with left-handedness may well have been influenced by the earlier jay-legged.
See KNOCK KNOCK, and also JAY-LEGGED, KNAP-KNEED
savings (northern England; especially used in ‘Pitmatic’)
While keepie-back can mean money saved for a rainy day, it could also mean the money earned by miners for overtime, and which was kept hidden by miners for spending on beer and gambling. It was used particularly by the mineworkers in the local pits of Northumberland and Durham, whose dialect has emerged as something distinct from Geordie or Northumbrian thanks to the wonderful lexicon that emerged from the mining communities, known as ‘Pitmatic’.
left-handed (Scotland)
The left-handed lexicon is a big one in dialect terms: most of the many synonyms for being a southpaw (a term from baseball referring to left-handed pitchers throwing with their arm facing the south side of the ballpark) are locally specific. Depending on where you are in the country, you can be corrie-handed, Kerr-handed, kay-pawed, cack-handed and caggy-handed. Scotland probably tops the list as the most prolific source of left-handed words. Simon Elmes, while researching Talking for Britain, discovered that within a 14-mile radius in Scotland there are fourteen different variations for being left-handed. What is more extraordinary is that almost all seem to relate to the Kerr family from Ferniehirst Castle in the Scottish Borders.
Legend has it that the Laird of the castle, Andrew Kerr, was left-handed, an attribute he found extremely useful in battle, for it allowed him to surprise the enemy with the unexpected direction of his sword. Not only that, but Kerr employed only left-handed soldiers. The castle itself was built to maximise this advantage: whereas in most castles the staircases spiral clockwise, Ferniehirst has counter-clockwise ones, providing left-handed swordsmen with an advantage – the bends give a defender’s left hand freedom to move over the open railing.
See also CUDDY-WIFTER, KAY-LEGGED
knock-kneed (the North-West, East Anglia and Lincolnshire)
Knap is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘the crest of a hill’, which later came to mean more generally ‘a bump or protuberance’ in some areas. Knap-kneed is most common in East Anglia and south Lincolnshire, but knappy-kneed is found in Cheshire and Derbyshire, and knapper-kneed is also recorded in Cheshire. In Devon and Somerset, the two ‘n’-sounds are characteristically inverted in knee-knapped.
See KNOCK KNOCK, and also JAY-LEGGED, KAY-LEGGED
If you have knees that knock together you will be known as knock-kneed across most of Britain, or something close to it. You may be knocker-kneed in Lancashire and Yorkshire and across the northern parts of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Lincolnshire, knocky-kneed to the northwest of that as far as Westmorland, and knack-kneed and knacky-kneed to the east of that. Knack-kneed can also be found in the South-West. Knap is used to replace knock in a number of places, especially East Anglia, while in the South-West, formations with knap get reversed so that knee comes first, as in the equally alliterative knee-knapped. Knee-knocked has also been recorded in Dorset, knee-knabbed in Devon, while knacker-kneed can be found in Yorkshire and knuckle-kneed in Suffolk. What is most striking is that these variations all preserve the jangly double ‘n’-sound of knock-kneed.
There are some exceptions to the alliterative rule: cock-kneed (Lincolnshire), crab-ankled (Lincolnshire), crooked-legged (Yorkshire) and hurked-up (Warwickshire).
See also JAY-LEGGED, KAY-LEGGED, KNAP-KNEED